IT WALKS BY NIGHT

New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1930., 1930. First edition. First edition. Publisher's "A-E" code on copyright page. Author's first novel. Former owner's neat inked name on the front pastedown sheet (completely covered by the dust jacket flap), with yellow Harper's seal at back of book removed (as is nearly always the case), leaving only a tiny remnant attached to page.211 and the rear fly leaf. Near Fine, bright copy in dust jacket with gentle sunning to spine, with light restoration to the spine ends and corners. Carr's first novel, a formidable locked-room mystery introducing his flamboyant Parisian character Henri Bencolin. Bencolin's case involves "an impossible murder in a gambling club - the victim, seen to enter an empty room with all entrances under observation, is subsequently found there, beheaded" (Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers (2nd ed.), p.146). Dust jacket promotional blurb says "When the police burst into the ante-room of a smart Paris gambling house, they find a mangled body thrown across the floor, while staring at them from the center of the empty room was the severed head of the Duc de Seligny. So begins a mystery story as weird and terrifying as any ever contrived by Poe. All the wiles of Bencolin, most satanic, most lovable of modern detectives, were needed for its solution." A crime fiction highspot housed in a clamshell case with the dust jacket design shown on the case.